A Man Called Milo Morai

III

On the 12th of August, Maggie O’Shea received a telegram the receipt of which was to change the course of Milo’s life for good and all. Taking both of her daughters out of nursing school, she and they hurriedly packed and entrained for Boston, Massachusetts, and the bedside of her last living relative, a deathly ill aunt. Pat O’Shea, who studiously avoided any public appearance at which he could not hide his hideously disfigured face, stayed behind.

Irunn had been badgering Milo for weeks concerning just exactly when he would accompany her to Wisconsin to meet her family—and, he was certain, while there, be maneuvered into asking for her hand … or at least give the appearance of having so done. He had been elusive and vague at best, blaming heavy commitments in his work, which was no lie, the recent volume of Western and Central European periodicals having so increased that he now lacked the time at the library to get very much of his history and current-events reading done, spending whole days from opening to closing of the facility translating and writing out the articles in American English. With the swollen volume and a limited budget, the per-word rate had had to be halved, but still Milo was assured of a very good, well-stuffed envelope each week.

Irunn had been badgering Milo, but on the Sunday following Maggie’s abrupt departure for points east, the big woman ceased to do so, becoming again all sweetness and light and snugglings in private and caresses in passing, and Milo breathed a silent sigh of relief, the week ahead promising to be full enough, if the thick stack of assorted publications the office staff had handed over to him on Friday was any indication.

By the time the library closed on Monday afternoon, he had—even at the rate of half a cent per word— done work to the tune of more than ten dollars and made a healthy dent in the stack of papers. But this had been accomplished only by keeping his nose pressed firmly to the grindstone, staying glued to the chair, not even taking time to leave for lunch. And so when he returned to the cool dimness of Maggie O’Shea’s boardinghouse just a few minutes before Rosaleen O’Farrell called for the dinner assembly, Milo was tired, ravenously hungry and a little edgy.

To this last and to the tiredness, he ascribed his seeming foreboding of imminent doom as he hurriedly washed up and put on clean undervest and shirt. But the all-pervasive aroma of Rosaleen’s corned beef and cabbage and carrots and boiled potatoes set his salivary glands into full flow and sped his pace down the stairs toward the waiting dinner table.

He was not surprised to see most of the household already seated around the long oaken table when he entered the dining room, the cloud of steam rising from the platters and serving dishes that lined the center of that table until it rose high enough to be dispersed by the air wafted lazily by the mahogany blades of the ceiling fan.

He was, however, surprised to see Irunn presiding at the head of the table—the absent chatelaine’s normal place—and the master of the house, Pat, occupying a side chair rather than his accustomed spot at the other end, the foot of the board. Milo’s look of wonderment at Pat was answered by a chuckle and a twisted grimace-smile.

“It’s time, Milo, that you began to learn your place at table.”

Milo’s second surprise came when Irunn did not, as usual, eat hurriedly, then rush upstairs long enough to brush her teeth and hair and immediately hurry out in the direction of the hospital and her seven-to-seven night shift.

As the tall woman continued to dawdle and chat with various of the others over coffee and deep-dish dried-apple pie and an old, very strong cheddar cheese, Milo finally drew his watch from his vest pocket, opened the hunter case and remarked, “Irunn, you’re going to be late to work, you know.”

Irunn laughed throatily. “Oh, no, my love, for this week I’ll be working days, not nights. It was necessary to make some rearrangements at the hospital in the absence of Mrs. O’Shea, and so what could I do but cooperate? But I am very glad, Milo, for this week we two will have so much more time together, won’t we? And we can go, on Wednesday night, to the club meeting, too.”

Even more rested now, a bit more relaxed, his belly now pleasantly full, Milo felt the ominous presentiment return full force. Something deep within him was screaming out, “Danger! Be wary! Danger!”

Excusing himself from the usual round of chess and chat and a nip of whiskey with Pat O’Shea after dinner, Milo ascended the stairs to his room, turned on the ceiling light, spread out papers on the bed and pushed his forebodings into the back of his consciousness as he applied himself to his translating chores. And there he worked steadily until his eyes were gritty with fatigue and he caught himself in the umpteeth mistake of the night. That was when he undressed, padded down to the communal bath in dressing robe and slippers, bathed, brushed his teeth, voided his bladder, then returned to his room and Crawled under the cool, muslin sheet with a sigh of utter weariness. In seconds, he was asleep.

He never knew just how long he had slept, but he woke suddenly, with the certain knowledge that there was someone else in his room, somewhere in the stygian darkness of the cloudy, moonless, starless late-summer night.

When he stopped breathing, he could hear the respiration of the other entity somewhere between the closed door to the hall and the side of his bed. For a brief moment, there was also a soft, slithery rustling sound, then a series of slow, shuffling noises, akin to someone moving forward cautiously, unsure of the footing and endeavoring to raise no creaking from the floorboards that underlay the faded, worn carpet.

He made no sound either, lying in perfect stillness, though wound wire-taut, his body flooded with adrenaline, his eyes slitted so that to a casual glance they might look closed in slumber, yet straining through the slitted openings to discern just who or what this unannounced and unexpected visitor might be. Unable to longer go without air, he took several slow, measured breaths, striving to make them sound as regular as possible.

Something touched the side of his mattress ever so gently, he heard a sharp intake of a deep, deep breath, and then …

Irunn was upon him. She kissed blindly at his face until she finally found his mouth and glued her own wet, hot one to his. His first, instinctive effort to push the rather heavy woman off him revealed to his fingers and hands the bare fact that she was nude.

What happened after that was thoroughly instinctive, the mere course of nature. When he awakened the second time, however, in the bright light of morning, Irunn was gone from his arms, his bed, his room, and she had already left for the hospital’s day shift when he dressed and came downstairs for breakfast.

The same thing happened on Tuesday night. On Wednesday night, he locked his door, but either Pat O’Shea was in collusion with Irunn or, more likely, felt Milo, her room key worked as easily as did his own in the simple old-fashioned spring locks with which the doors were fitted. On the Thursday, he considered wedging the back of a chair under the doorknob, but then mentally shrugged and gave up trying to fight her and her amorous nighttime forrays. After all, he enjoyed sex, he had discovered, just as much as she obviously did, and to create any sort of a noisy ruckus in the O’Shea house would likely get them both expelled from it on moral grounds, for friends or no, Pat and Maggie could do nothing else were they to maintain a necessary sense of respectability for the house and the other boarders. At least that was how he rationalized his continued enjoyment of the forbidden fruit with which Irunn was so generously serving him each night.

If anyone in the house did hear nighttime noises, they attended to their own business, and in any case, Maggie O’Shea and her daughters returned after an absence of two weeks and, with her again in the house of nights, Irunn ceased her after-dark activities with Milo and recommenced the night shift at the hospital.

She also recommenced harassing Milo about making a trip with her to Wisconsin, and he, perforce, recommenced his near-lies and evasive actions.

One thing about which he had no need to lie was the press of his work, for on the 28th of September, Germany had been given the bulk of what had been, prior to the Great War, Prussian Silesia, and the European press was full of this nearly unprecedented action and speculated frequently and at great length upon its possible consequences. Because of these events, Milo and the rest of the translators were terribly overworked. He now was burdened with assignments two and three times each week—being given more every two or three days than he formerly had received for an entire week—and he was working all day, every day, and generally long into the nights, as well. The sole good thing about it was the money. He now was earning as much as twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a week, and despite board and room, laundry, outside lunches when he could find the time and remembered to eat, toiletries and odds and ends of clothing, he still was adding substantially each week to the contents of his strong box.

It went on and on and on. The work did not abate, nor did Irunn’s increasingly urgent demands that he meet her family in Wisconsin. Then, overnight and inexplicably, she again became all sweetness and light, seemingly having forgotten her demands that Milo go north with her immediately if not sooner. He was relieved, in a way, though he still felt the nagging notion that it was not over, that the willful woman had not really given up on him, but simply had changed her mode and direction of attack.

He came back to the O’Shea house after the library closed of a night in mid-October to be met by Pat. “Milo, Irunn, she had to take off for her home place in Wisconsin real sudden-like and she left thishere for you.” He proffered a sealed plain white envelope.

“Milo, my own love,” the note inside read, “My brother, Sven, has been taken suddenly ill, and I have gone up to be of assistance to my mother and sisters. I will be gone one week, no more, I hope. A claim ticket is enclosed. It is for a ring on which I have made the deposit and it is being made bigger for me by the shopkeeper. Please to pick it up for me on next Monday and pay the man the rest of the money for it and I will pay you back when I come back to Chicago. With all my undying love, Your Irunn. (P.S. Please burn this note for no one but you must read it. I.)”

When Milo went downtown to the jewelry-pawnshop of a Mr. Plotkin, he was impressed by Irunn’s taste. The ring was stunning, a full carat, at least, of blue-white diamond in a setting of reddish gold, antique European, or so the jeweler, Plotkin, averred. He knew Milo’s name, and Milo assumed that Irunn must have telephoned him before she left for home. Back at the boardinghouse, he deposited the ring in its velvet box in his strongbox and got back to work on his translations. But something told him not to burn Irunn’s note. That too went into the steel lockbox and the time was soon to come when he would be glad that he had heeded his feeling.

Things began to close in on him even before Irunn’s return. First was a letter that was awaiting him when he returned to the O’Shea house one night. The postmark was a Wisconsin one, but the handwriting was not Irunn’s. The writer had been a man and, from the style of the letters and numbers, a man of European education.

“My dear Herr Moray, Our Irunn has told me of your many languages, so I pen this in my native Norwegian. This is a very good thing, for although I speak and read English well enough, I never have been able to well express my thoughts in its written version, and it is very necessary that I fully express myself in this letter.

“For all that no one of us has met or even seen you, we know much of you from your letter and from our Irunn. She has made your excuses for not coming to our farm to properly ask her hand according to ancient custom, and it is true, as you so well wrote, this is a new country with new customs and we older ones must learn to live by the ways of our new land, forgetting many of the old ways of Norway.

“Irunn has spoken well and often of you, of your goodness, your gentleness, your strength and your bravery in facing and defeating the evil man with the knife. She has spoken, too, of how long and hard you work at your job and of how very much money it pays you. To make even a decent income is, I well know, no easy task in the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

“Therefore, here is your answer, my son. I will be most pleased to give you the hand of my fine daughter, Irunn, in the bonds of holy, Christian wedlock, forgoing the meeting of your person until your so-important work allows you leave to visit me at my steading. Thor Kris-tiansson.”

Milo’s second shock came the very next day in the person of a youngster who sought him out at his library table and gave him a rich-looking, parchment-bond envelope containing on heavy, embossed stationery a request to immediately come to the residence of one Father Alfonse Rüstung beside Saint Germanus’ Church. After a brisk half-hour walk, Milo arrived and was greeted at the door by a young, rather effeminate-looking man wearing a cassock who bade him be seated in a fair-sized, well-furnished room.

The man who presently entered was also wearing a cassock, but there was nothing effeminate about him; his face looked to be roughly carven out of craggy granite, and his handshake indicated crushing strength. He looked to be of late-middle years, his hair was sparse and receding, his hands were big and square and thickly furred with dark-blond hairs.

After a plain, matronly-looking woman had brought in a tea tray, poured and departed without a single word, Father Alfonse got down to his reason for summoning Milo.

“Mr. Moray, I have heard so much about you that I almost feel to have known you for years.” He smiled fleetingly, then went on to say, “Although, at the first, I must admit that I was concerned to hear that you were working for that Dr. Osterreich and his nest of Jewish troublemakers …”

“Troublemakers, Father Rüstung?” Milo interjected.

“Yes, troublemakers, Mr. Moray. People who are doing everything that they can—from a safe distance, of course—to poison the minds of the American people against Germany and the current government of Germany. You did not know that this was the purpose of their digest for which you do translations? Well, that last is yet another mark in your favor.

“But that is not why I asked you to come visit me, Mr. Moray. How you make your money is your business, as is for whom you choose to work in these times of few job opportunities, and besides, if all that you do is make accurate translations of European newspapers, I cannot see how you, at least, are doing harm to Germany. You do not try to do more than translate, then?”

Milo shook his head. “No, Father Rüstung, that’s all I’m supposed to do, paid to do. But I can’t see …”

“Fine, fine.” The priest smiled almost warmly. “No, what I need to know is when you and your intended wish to schedule your wedding mass, for you both will need to meet with me several times. There are the banns to be read, and as you are not a Catholic, there will be some papers that you must sign, of course.”

Milo felt for the second time in two days as if he had been clubbed down with a baseball hat. He just sat mute for a long moment, his mouth gaping open.

“Well, Mr. Moray?” probed the priest. “I must have a date today.”

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” he finally got out. “I’m not about to get married, not to anybody, no matter what that stubborn, pigheaded, wedding-crazy Norwegian may have told you.”

Rüstung’s pale-blue eyes became as cold as glacial ice, and he stared at Milo as if at some loathsome thing that had crawled from under a boulder. His voice, tpo, was become frigid, his words curt and clipped.

“You have taken your suit rather far, Mr. Moray, to now change your mind. I know—I am Irunn ‘Tiers-/ dottar’s confessor. I also am not without influence in this city and state, and I here warn you, unless you do the honorable thing by the poor girl you callously led on and seduced into mortal sin, I will see you laid in the Cook County Jail, if not in the state prison. You were well advised to heed me, Mr. Moray—if that is truly your name!—for I do not indulge in the making of idle threats, and I feel most strongly in this matter.

“If I do not hear from you of your planned wedding date in … ten days, I shall act to have you jailed and tried for criminal fornication and breach of promise to marry.

“Good day, Mr. Moray.”

“Another light this all puts onto the issue, mein freund Milo,” said Sam Osterreich soberly. “And to underestimate this Nazi-loving priest, do not, either, for he is, unfortunately, very powerful politically in this city, county and state.”

“What has the arrogant bastard got against you, Sam?” asked Milo. “And against your group’s digest of foreign news?”

Grimly, Osterreich replied, “Against me as one person only, nothing of which I know, save simply that I am a Jew, an Austrian Jew. As for his fear and hatred of our group and the digest …

“You have heard of, read of the Deutsche-American Bund, perhaps. Yes, well, this Pomeranian priest, this Father Alfonse Rustung, is both an officer and organizer of the Bund. The Bund would have eferyone to think that they promote just only a spirit of friendship between Germany and America combined with the same sort of love and respect for the homeland as one sees in efery other ethnic club of immgrants.

“But, Milo, what they to project to Americans vould and what is their real raison d’etre vastly at odds are. It true is that the majority of the Bund members and supporters only poor, beguiled dupes and deluded fools are, but the leaders and the organizers, these all very evil men are, scheming together to efentually set up in this beautiful, free country nothing less than a murderous, fascistic government along the lines of—indeed, allied with—the Nazis of Germany, the Fascisti of Italy, the Iron Guard of Rumania and the Falange espanola of General Francisco Franco.

“They at great length carry on about the aims of Herr Hitler. They say that he but wishes to reunify to Germany and Austria the lands and the territories and the German-speaking persons so shamefully stripped from Germany in the vake of the Great War, to reunite all into a Deutsches Reich, a single nation all Germans … and did they truth tell, efen I could with them agree.

“But as I know, and as you must by now know from your work at translations, the truth, in the Bund does not lie, which why it is that they and my group at great odds are and must always be. To silence us all they vould, Milo, to nullify our so important mission and vork, and they must not, they cannot, be allowed to defeat us— rather to defeat them we must.

“But back to your so personal danger, Milo. Mein freund, I and the group cannot to you offer much real protection from the priest, Rustung. He is just too well connected to vealthy and powerful men who now occupy high places in the city of Chicago, in the County of Cook and in the State of Illinois.

“Therefore, you only two options haf. Either to marry the nurse, Irunn Thorsdottar, you must or to leaf the state and go far away. One hears that the State of California a most congenial climate has… . But the choice of destination must yours be, and please to not of it tell me, for then if by the police I am questioned I to lie to them would not need.

“All of the help and advice I can to give you, I haf, mein freund, Milo. You what, ten days haf to the expiration of the Nazi priest’s ultimatum? Then your preparations make quickly and quietly. It well were that you tell no one of just when you leaving are or where you going ??? not to sell personal possessions try, rather is to pawn them much better, demanding detailed receipts and guarantees, that you may soon buy them back. When go you do, travel light—only your money, small valuables and clothes in no more than a single small case. To travel first-class, do not, and tell no one your real name, from where you come or to where you go. Gott sie

dankt, travel papers not required are in all this great, free country, so to purchase forgeries you have no need. If you need of money haf …”

The psychiatrist opened a drawer of his desk with a key from his watchchain and brought out several sheafs of bills of as many denominations. But Milo waved his hand and shook his head in negation.

“Thank you so much, Sam, you’re a true friend, but no. I have enough money, now, to get clear out of the country, should I choose to do so.”

Osterreich smiled slightly and nodded briskly. “Gut, gut, that last is just what the police I vill tell if asked by them, that to leaf America entirely, you spoke today. No matter how serious the charges of which the priest and the nurse accuse you, hardly it is to be thought that to so much trouble and expense they or the authorities would go as to try to hunt you down beyond the borders of America.”

Milo stalked through the O’Shea house, going directly from the front door to the sideboard on which Pat kept his whiskey, filled a tumbler and drained k off, neat, then refilled it.

“Saints preserve us, Mr. Moray,” came the voice of the cook, Rosaleen, from the kitchen doorway, behind him, “it’s gettin’ pie-eyed you’ll be in nothin’ flat, swillin’ of the craytchur like that! What’s befallen you, this lovely day?”

With her on one side of the bare dining table, him on the other, Milo sat and drank and told her all of it, from start to the immediate present. She heard him out in silence, only pursing her lips and frowning when he spoke of his nights of unhallowed copulation with Irunn and again on the occasion when he roundly cursed the priest, for his meddling and his threats. Not until he was done did the old woman speak.

“Och, poor Mr. Moray, it’s pitying you I am. That Miss Irunn, why she must be daft, clear off her knob. What kind of a married life could she expect to have with a man she had so shamefully trapped into it with lies and all? Bad enough it is that she lied to you and to her poor parents and forged your name to a letter of proposal, then gave it to her father, but to lie and all to a holy priest of God, och, how terrible a woman she is who always gave the appearance of being good and so very proper. Herself will have thirteen kittens with plush tails when it’s hearing of it she is.”

Even as Milo opened his mouth to speak in protest at this planned violation of his impulsive confidence, Rosaleen raised her hand.

“She must know, soon or late, Mr. Moray, sure and you can see that? It’s better, I’m thinkin’, that she hear it from first me and then you than from Miss Irunn or this Jerry priest or … or others. As for the rest, it was good advice that the Jew doctor was givin’ you, I thinks, I do. But just take all the time you find yourself needin’ to get ready to-leave; when she’s heard it all, herself won’t be heavin’ you out, though she may well throw that Miss Irunn onto the streets, where the schemin’, connivin’ strumpet belongs. To be sneakin’ around of nights and crawl naked into the bed of a decent, sleepin’ man to try to make him marry her, Holy Mither save us, that’s scandlous, it is, I say!

“And don’t you be worryin’ none about the police comin’ here and haulin’ you in unawares, Mr. Moray. My late husband, Jimmy O’Farrell, God bless his soul, was a sergeant on the force. Twenty-four years in harness, he was, and I still have more nor a few of the boyos as friends. I’ll just be puttin’ out the word and I’ll know wheniver a warrant comes out for you, and you’ll be knowin’ as soon as I do, too.”

Some hour and a half after that night’s dinner, there was a knock on Milo’s door and he opened it to see Maggie O’Shea, still in her white uniform, lacking only her cap. “Mr. Moray, we two must talk of the matter you discussed with Rosaleen this afternoon. Now, while the others are down in the parlor listening to the radio, is a good time. I have just hung up the telephone after ringing up and talking with Father Rustung, and I want your version of these shocking events from your lips. I feel that as the worst happened under my roof, I have that right, at least.”

Maggie seated herself in the single chair and let him tell it in his words, in his order of events and at his own pace of speech. As he fell finally silent, the stout woman sighed and shook her graying head.

“I don’t really know just whom to believe in this story matter, Mr. Moray. I’ve known Irunn Thorsdottar much longer, of course, since she was in training, in fact, but you have always seemed an honest, decent, truthful man to me … and clearly to dear Rosaleen, too. She’s carrying on like your sworn champion, and she’s a proven good judge of character.

“Your story of this mess and how it developed exactly contradicts many parts of Father Rüstung’s version of the same events, but then, of course, he got his facts or fables from Irunn.

“You swear to me that you never, at any time, under even the most intimate of circumstances, drunk or sober, asked her to be your wife, Mr. Moray?”

“Yes, I certainly do, Mrs. O’Shea. She was the first and the only one who ever discussed marriage, and I’ve told her until I was blue in the face that I just am in no position or frame of mind to marry her or anyone else, now. But still, she kept harping on that same tired subject, trying to get me to go with her to Wisconsin to meet her folks.”

Maggie frowned then, her lips thinning and her eyes narrowing. “And yet, Mr. Moray, both Father Rüstung and the jeweler whose name he gave me, Izaak Plotkin, confirm that you bought for Irunn a diamond engagement ring. Had you forgotten that?”

Milo’s voice rose in exasperation. “Now, damn it, Mrs. O’Shea, Irunn picked out that ring herself, put a deposit on it and left it with that jeweler for enlargement of the band. When she left for Wisconsin so suddenly, she gave your husband, Pat, a note asking me to pick it up,for her and promising to pay me back for the cost of it. I did pick it up; it’s here, in my lockbox. Engagement ring, hell— I’ll wring the neck of that bitch when I get my hands on her!”

“Oh, no you won’t, not in my house, Mr. Moray,” said Maggie bluntly, in hard, no-nonsense tones. Then she asked, “Can you prove any of what you just told me, Mr. Moray? Everyone but you—Father Rüstung, Izaak Plotkin, my husband, Pat, and most of the rest of the household and Irunn’s family’s—is under the impression that she is your intended bride.”

Milo sighed, hearing disbelief of him in the woman’s tone. “The only scrap of evidence I have in regard to my verity, Mrs. O’Shea, is the note that Irunn left with your husband when she left here, last week. She said in a postscript that I should burn it. Now I can see why she wanted it burned, and I’m damned glad I didn’t. Here, I’ll show you.”

When he had dragged the strongbox from its place beneath his bed and unlocked it, he handed the satin ring box and the envelope containing the handwritten note to Maggie, along with the receipt for monies paid and the dated record of the transaction on which he had insisted.

After reading everything thoroughly, opening the box, removing the ring and examining the bauble critically, it was Maggie who this time sighed and shook her head.

“Please accept my full and complete apology, Mr. Moray,” she said slowly, soberly and contritely. “Knowing Rosaleen and her intuition as well as I do of old, knowing that she instantly believed you with no shred of evidence in your favor presented her, I should have believed her and you, too. It’s a devilish web that the young woman has woven about you, and Dr. Osterreich may well be right that your only choices are either to do what she wants, marry her, or leave the state.

“Knowing, as we do now, of the enormity of the evil and the soul-damning sin of which she has proved herself capable, were I a man, I’d want no part of her; you seem to feel just that way, too. So I guess you must leave Illinois, for even if you are innocent of the breach-of-promise charge, you admit to being guilty of fornication, which is a mortal sin and a legal crime, as well, though not often invoked, I must admit, in these modern times, anyway. If they tried to lock up everyone guilty of fornication and adultery, I doubt they could build reformatories fast enough to put them all in.

“So, have you decided yet where you’re going to go? No, wait, don’t tell me, I don’t really think I should know.”